The Chittering

The sun had barely risen over the crumbling town of Ashridge when the first scream echoed through the empty streets. Sarah gripped the blood-stained axe tighter in her hands. She stood on the roof of an abandoned diner, eyes scanning the tree line. Fog curled between the shattered shopfronts below, masking the streets where they’d once walked their dogs and laughed over coffee. Now, it stank of blood and decay.

The chittering had started three weeks ago, high-pitched, unnatural… At first, people thought it was some kind of disease in the squirrel population. Then old Mr. Delaney had wandered out into his patio and never came back. They found what was left of him two days later: a hollowed-out husk in a pool of red, surrounded by tiny claw prints and tufts of reddish fur.

Sarah still remembered the moment she realised it wasn’t a joke. Her little brother, Max, had opened the back door to throw out the rubbish. He didn’t even have time to scream. They came pouring out of the trees, red squirrels with glowing crimson eyes, black veins webbing their bodies, and long, curved fangs slick with blood. They moved like a wave, scuttling over walls, chewing through siding, all with a seeming unquenchable thirst for human blood. One had launched straight at Max’s throat and tore it out mid-air. She never forgave herself for hesitating.

Now, the survivors, what few were left, moved only at night. Darkness didn’t stop the squirrels, but they didn’ t roam far from their nests at night. They were like tiny, undead vampires, always watching from the branches. Sarah heard it again: the chittering, growing louder. She knelt down and pulled a dirty set of binoculars from her pocket. They were coming. Dozens of them… Hundreds…

A red tide flowed from the woods, claws clicking against pavement, eyes glowing like hot coals. They moved like a pack of wolves with rabies, only faster, smarter, hungrier. Sarah keyed her radio. “Shelter Six, do you copy?” A crackle. “Copy. What’s your status?”, “They’re moving again. Full swarm. Headed straight for downtown.”, A pause. Then: “We’re sealing the hatch. You should run.”

Sarah looked toward the old church at the end of Main Street. It was the last standing building, fortified with scrap metal and barbed wire. She could make it. Maybe.

As she turned to make a dash for the church she noticed the Jones twins out of the corner of her eye, ten years old, huddled under a flipped-over lorry. She swore under her breath, strapped the axe to her back, and vaulted off the roof.

Sarah’s boots hit the pavement with a crunch that echoed louder than she’d liked. The fog clung to her legs as she sprinted, the cold air tearing at her lungs. Behind her, the chittering intensified, high-pitched, maddening. A sound that turned marrow to ice.

The killer squirrels were gaining.

She could hear them, scraping over broken glass, claws dragging across rusted metal. One launched from a lamppost, fangs bared, aiming for her throat. Sarah spun mid-stride and caught it with the flat of her axe, slamming it against the ground. It twitched once, then hissed and disintegrated into a puddle of black ichor.

No time to stop.

Ahead, the overturned truck loomed in the haze. Two small shapes peeked out from beneath, thin, pale, wide-eyed.

The Jones twins.

“MOVE!” she shouted, sliding beside them. “We gotta go, NOW!!!”

Bobby, the older of the two, nodded, dragging his sister out with him. Sarah grabbed their hands and ran, yanking them into the alley behind Mrs. Carter’s collapsed bakery. The swarm poured into the street just seconds later, skittering over the wreckage like a river of teeth and fur.

A squirrel flew through the air, fangs flashing.

Sarah twisted, swung the axe in an arc, and cleaved it mid-air. Blood sprayed across the bricks, sizzling where it landed. The twins screamed, but they kept running.

They bolted through backyards and burned-out cars, past the wreckage of lives that once meant something. The town of Ashridge had become a graveyard. And its gravediggers were fast, furry, and undead.

As they rounded the corner to the church, the gates slammed shut just ahead of them.

“No!” Sarah roared. She sprinted faster, dragging the kids with her. “OPEN THE GATE!”

A slit in the steel opened, one wild, terrified eye behind it.

“You’re compromised! You’ll lead them to us!”

Sarah didn’t stop. “We’re CLEAN! Open it or I start chopping!”

Behind her, the scratching and screeching exploded like a siren. The squirrels were scaling the walls, leaping from telephone wires. Dozens now. Maybe hundreds. Red lightning streaking across the fog.

A hiss of hydraulics. The gate began to rise, slowly.

Sarah shoved the kids ahead, turned, and held the axe like it was part of her body. A blur of red slammed into her chest. She went down hard, stars flashing behind her eyes. The creature’s teeth scraped against her armour as it clawed at her neck.

She grabbed it, screamed, and in one quick motion spun and crushed its skull against the curb. More were coming.

The twins scrambled through the gap under the rising gate, screaming for her to follow.

Sarah backed toward it, swinging in wide arcs. Blood soaked her arms, but it wasn’t all hers. Her back hit steel. She ducked, rolled, and the gate slammed down behind her just as a dozen squirrel-fangs thunked into the metal.

Silence, except for the scratching.

The crowd of survivors inside the church stared at her like she was a ghost. She looked around at the shocked faces, then down at the twins, who clung to her coat. “That was too close, we need to be careful to get back to the church before dawn, lucky I was out there or these two would not have made it back.”

The church smelled like old wood, sweat, and fear. High stained-glass windows were blacked out with tarps, and rows of pews had been shoved aside to make room for cots, weapon tables, and crude barricades. Candles flickered in corners. Every face Sarah passed bore the same haunted look—wide eyes, clenched jaws, too many funerals and not enough survivors.

A woman in fatigues strode over to Sarah, “Lieutenant Reyes, I have an update”, they both approached the alter which now had a map spread across it, along with several hand-drawn sketches of town streets, escape tunnels, and supply routes. A red X marked the diner roof Sarah had just escaped. “We have lost the diner, and the food supplies” sighed Sarah. Reyes grimaced and clenched her teeth, as she spun around and marced away she barked at another man in fatigues “Jonah. Check the kids for bites.”

Sarah stepped between them instinctively. “They’re clean. I watched the whole way. They weren’t touched.”, Jonah hesitated. Reyes gave a short nod. “Fine. But they stay in the quarantine wing for the night. Protocol.”

Sarah knelt in front of the twins. “You’ll be safe there, stay together, I’ll come find you in the morning, okay?”. Bobby nodded bravely, holding his sister close. Sarah watched them go, heart heavy. Then she turned back to the map. “What’s the plan?” she asked.

Reyes gave a tired chuckle. “Plan? You mean besides wait and hope they don’t chew through the walls?” Sarah leaned over the altar, pointing to the park. “They nest in the trees. I seen it last night while I was on patrol. That’s where they come from every morning. You burn that grove, maybe you kill half their swarm.”

Reyes scoffed. “We’ve tried fire. Doesn’t spread far enough before they scatter. They’re smart. They learn.” Sarah tapped the edge of the map again. “Then we bait them. Light it from the inside. We draw them in and torch the whole damn place”. “You offering to be the bait?” Sarah stared into Reyes’s eyes. “I already am, they have my scent now”.

That night, Sarah stood at the edge of Ashridge Park, a metal canister of accelerant strapped to her back and a flare gun in her hand. Jonah had come with her, young, quiet, and carrying more explosives than anyone his age should. “They’re gonna come fast,” he said, planting a timed charge near a hollow tree. “Once they smell the fuel, it’ll be like dinner bell at a blood buffet.”

“Let ’em come,” Sarah muttered. “They’re not the only ones who can feed.” Jonah blinked at her, half in awe, half in fear. “You’re not like the others.” “I don’t have anything left to be afraid of.”

The first chitter came from the treetops. Then another. And another. Crimson eyes flickered in the long shadows of dawn, like fireflies in hell. The swarm was waking. Jonah whispered, “Timer’s set. You’ve got ninety seconds.” Sarah nodded and stepped into the grove.

She lit a trail of accelerant behind her, just enough to catch once she was clear. The squirrels began to pour in from all sides, clicking claws, gnashing fangs, moving like shadows across bark and branch.

She raised the flare gun.

Wait…

They closed in, surrounding her. Red eyes, everywhere.

Not yet…

The biggest one emerged from a rotted log, twice the size of the others, its fur blackened with dried blood. The alpha.

“Come get some of this” Sarah whispered. NOW!!!

She fired. The flare hit the ground and exploded in a wall of flame. The accelerant ignited, and the grove became an inferno. Screeching, writhing shapes flailed in the fire, claws melting, fur blackening. Jonah’s charges detonated in a chain, ripping through the nests like thunder from the gods.

Sarah stumbled out of the blaze, coughing, arms burning from heat, hair singed, but alive. Behind her, the forest burned. The alpha squirrel screeched, half its body on fire, and lunged—only for Reyes to appear from the smoke and shoot it through the skull with a silver bolt.

Ashridge Park was ash. Sarah looked at Reyes, chest heaving. “That’s how we win,” she gasped. Reyes nodded slowly, eyes still wide from the destruction.

“That’s how we start.”

Ashridge was quiet for the first time in weeks. The fires from the park smouldered on the horizon, the smoke rising into a blood-red dawn. Sarah sat on the steps of the church, her axe beside her, face streaked with soot. Reyes stood beside her, scanning the treeline through binoculars. Nothing moved.

The swarm was gone. “We actually did it,” Reyes whispered. “We killed them.” But Sarah didn’t smile. Something gnawed at her, deep in her gut. It was too easy. Too clean.

That night, they held a vigil inside the church. Survivors gathered, candles in hand, mourning their lost and whispering cautious hope for the future. The Jones twins clung to Sarah’s sides. She watched Reyes address the room like a new leader, her voice firm, her words filled with grit and rebuilding.

A gentle breeze wafted through the church and the candles merrily danced and flickered in unison, then there was a larger, ice cold, bone chilling gust and all the candles went out at once. The church was plunged into darkness, just the faint glow of the moon as it twinkled through the freshly uncovered stain glass windows, casting multi coloured silhouettes across all gathered. There was a panicked murmur among the survivors.

Suddenly a deep hum filled the air - low, electrical, wrong… The sort of sound that you feel more than hear. It resonated up through the floor of the old church and into the wooden pews where everyone sat. Sarah pulled the terrified twins closer to her side.

The stained-glass window at the back of the church began to glow brightly. Not with moonlight, but with pulsing neon blue lines, like circuitry that was slowly growing and etching itself into the glass itself.

The walls started to tremble as the low hum intensified, it was as if they themselves were scared of what was to come. The survivors were now all huddled in the centre of the church, the din of crying children, and the trembling voices of various adults trying to gather everyone together for mutual protection from this new unseen horror was deafening.

There was a sharp, mechanical click that echoed through the sanctuary, then everything stopped… silence… darkness… The twins were gone, Reyes was gone, the survivors were gone, the church was gone… Sarah was left suspended completely weightless in the tranquil pitch black abyss of nothingness.

A moment later it was as if an invisible force grabbed her and sharply dragged her down, as if in freefall, but there was no wind or sensation of friction, but her stomach was in her mouth. As she tumbled downward, in the distance Sarah managed to grasp a glimpse of a single twinkling star, and she was being dragged towards it at an ever increasing velocity.

Sarah became aware that this star was rapidly getting bigger, like a train headlight in a tunnel, and it was heading directly towards her and there was nothing she could do to get out of its way. The bright white light was upon her in seconds, completely engulfing her field of vision.

Sarah gasped in shock, choking on artificial air. Gone were the wooden pews and flickering candlelight. She had to squint hard against the jeeringly bright white lights, but as her blurry eyes began to focus, she realised she was seated in a sterile white room. Seamless walls. Cold floor. No scent. No sound. No sign of life, just a thin black monitor embedded in the wall ahead.

It flickered on.

USER PROFILE: SARAH DENTON Psychological Trial #124: “The Chittering” Result: STABILITY COMPROMISED Threat Assessment: Escalated Empathy / Rebellion from narrative structure Recommendation: Terminate Simulation / Archive Anomaly

Sarah, continued to stare at the screen in disbelief. “What… what is this… where am I?”

Another line appeared:

Would you like to provide feedback on your experience?

Sarah screamed and tried to get up, but her arms, legs, and head were all strapped tightly down, she could not move her body a millimetre.

Straining her eyes as far as she could to the left, Sarah caught a glimpse in what looked to be a mirror. She could see a reflection of herself, but it wasn’t the Sarah she was used to seeing in the mirror. Her face was a lot thinner and paler than she was used to, and where her hair should be was a tangled mess of fine electrical wiring attached to her head and running to somewhere unseen behind the chair.

Flicking her eyes as far as she could see to the right, there was a stand with an IV bag and a heart monitor, 196bpm, that seems about right, her heart was pounding so hard in her chest that she could count herself.

There was a beep and the screen changed again:

You exhibited signs of emotional deviation from test parameters. You prioritized non-objectives (children). You altered narrative vectors. You burned the nest too early.

In the next room a man in a suit takes off a VR headset, stares in through the one way observation window, and sighs. “Scrap the sequence,” he tells the technician beside him. “She’s too unpredictable. Even in full threat immersion, she still resists. The AI interface cannot cope with this level of defiance.

“I don’t know how many more runs her body can take, better get the collection team prepped to retrieve another ‘volunteer’”.

On the screen behind him, lines of code flicker. Then a single line loops:

SARAH.DENTON.EXE - Error: Narrative Instability Detected

The technician leans back. “Guess even killer vampire squirrels aren’t enough to break her.” The man smirks. “We’ll try cyborg raccoons next time.” He presses a button. “Beginning psychological trial #125”

Inside the simulation, the streets of Ashridge rebuild themselves from wireframes, and Sarah Denton is born again.

Eyes opening.

Axe in hand.

Fog creeping in…